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Who on earth trains cats? Trained lions and tigers used to be a staple of circuses, until public opinion turned against them. But why would anyone want to train their pet cat, except to show off to their friends? There is, in fact, a serious purpose: training can improve not just your relationship with your cat but also his sense of wellbeing.

There are many everyday situations that cats have to cope with as part of the deal of living with us. They don’t easily digest the fact that humans come in many shapes and sizes. Many find it difficult to adjust to living alongside dogs or other cats. They hate feeling trapped and don’t understand that sometimes we have to restrict their movements for their own good, such as when we need to give them medication. They don’t like being taken to places they don’t know or where they sense danger. While some take these situations in their stride, most don’t.

Training is the best way of helping your cat to cope with those demands. Every cat can benefit from being taught how to cope better with tricky situations, such as accepting a pill or going inside a cat carrier. And once we understand how cats think, training one is actually remarkably straightforward.

What is your cat thinking?

A major difference between our brains and cats’ is that cats live largely in the present. They have excellent memories – otherwise training would be impossible – but those memories probably only surface when triggered by something similar happening in the present: for example, a cat that catches sight of a black cat through the window may at that moment remember other encounters he has had with black cats. A few minutes after the black cat disappears, he will be thinking about something else: cats don’t seem to be capable of recalling memories whenever they want to in the way that humans can. A cat that hears his owner’s voice saying, “Come here, kitty,” will instantly remember the previous occasions when he has responded by running toward his owner – and receiving a food treat for his trouble – and so will do the same again.

Cats
are not capable of recalling memories the way humans can Credit:
Alamy

Studies show that the mammalian brain, whether in a dog, a cat, or a mouse, generates a common repertoire of simple emotions – happiness, fear, anxiety, frustration. Ultimately, training works by altering the circumstances under which these emotions are evoked. The reward-based training that works best with cats aims to decrease negative feelings, such as fear and anxiety, and increase positive feelings, such as joy and affection, by changing the cat’s associations between these feelings and its day-to-day experiences.

Cats learn in the same way as dogs

Training dogs relies on their unique sensitivity to human body language and their innate affection for whoever looks after them. Dogs are also fundamentally sociable, reflecting their origins as wolves living in family groups. Cats, descended from solitary territorial animals, are generally wary of social contact. Yet the profound differences in the way cats see us compared with dogs can obscure the fact that these species actually learn, for all intents and purposes, in the same way. It’s their motivations for learning that differ.

Cats learn in the same way as dogsCredit:
Alamy

Cats’ primary attachment is to place, not people. A cat’s first priority is to find a safe place to live and a reliable source of food, which for pet cats is usually satisfied in their owner’s house, before they can start to form strong social attachments. Most cats’ standard reaction to anything unfamiliar is to keep their distance and at the first hint that trouble may be brewing, to run away. Thus, very few cats ever learn much about how to deal with an unfamiliar situation, other than to put some distance between them and it. If such experiences are repeated, the negative connotations only increase: just consider most cats’ reluctance to enter their cat carrier, although they will actively seek out a similar-sized cardboard box in which to take a nap. For this reason, training should start with changes to the cat’s environment that enhance its feelings of security, giving him confidence to face his fears.

Scolding a cat is a waste of time

One crucial difference between humans and cats is what is referred to as “theory of mind”. When we talk to our cats, we can imagine them listening to us – and we know that they have minds of their own. Cats clearly identify the humans they know as individuals and react to what we do, but scientific evidence indicates that they do not have any comprehension that we are thinking about them. They can pay a lot of attention to what we’re doing, but seem to have little idea of our thought processes. So when someone finds a piece of meat missing from the kitchen worktop and comes to the conclusion that their cat has stolen it, it’s natural for them to go looking for the cat to scold. We would rightly expect a child who had appropriated a biscuit from the kitchen a few minutes earlier to know precisely why he or she is being scolded, even before the verbal explanation. It’s natural to expect a cat to be able to make the same deduction. However, because cats don’t even realise that we think, it’s impossible for them to realise what we’re thinking. Even minor punishments can have an adverse effect. For example, a water sprayer is often recommended as a way of deterring a cat from leaping on to the kitchen worktops: the sound of the spray, which resembles a cat’s hiss, and the feel of water on the cat’s skin are both mildly aversive. But what does the cat associate this with – the act of jumping on to the worktop, or the presence of the owner?

An owner who punishes a cat under the mistaken belief that it is feeling guilty about a mess made while she was out will be harming her relationship with the cat (and possibly making it more likely that the cat will make the same mess again). Cats live “in the moment” and are incapable of associating an action they have performed with its consequence – negative or positive – if that consequence occurs even a few minutes, let alone an hour, later.

Hungry cats are easier to train

At the beginning of training, the most important rewards are those known in the training world as primary reinforcers. These are things that cats instinctively find rewarding, and the most universal example is food. Being a carnivore, rewards comprised entirely of animal protein will be valued most highly by your cat. An ideal reward, therefore, consists of a tiny piece of cooked meat or fish. It is important that the rewards are small so they can be eaten quickly to allow you to speedily take up training where you left off before delivery of the reward, to keep learning momentum and to stop your cat from getting full too quickly.

If cats can be trained to use a cat-flap, why not something else?Credit:
Peter Baumber

As a guide, a single reward should be about half the size of your smallest fingernail. Cats don’t learn well immediately after they’ve eaten. Thus, it is important that your cat is feeling hungry so that he is motivated to engage with you for a food treat. However, being too hungry can inhibit training, as the cat may focus more on the food itself than on learning why he is being rewarded.

Why cats scratch your furniture

Cats are seen as easy pets to keep, but they have complex psychological needs. Somewhat problematically for owners, the cat with whom you share your home has changed little from its feral counterparts who defend large territories and hunt for their food. When such behaviours occur at home, the result is often despair, as furniture is shredded by cat claws, or disgust as another corpse is laid on the kitchen floor. But with a little training we can teach our cats to redirect such behaviours to appropriate targets.

While scratching is a natural, instinctive and pleasurable behaviour, it can be frustrating to discover that although you’ve provided your cat with a pristine scratching post, he chooses instead to scratch the stair carpet or sofa. Even among professionals, opinions are divided as to the best solution. Often, commercial scratching posts are too short – a cat needs to be able to stretch to full height when scratching. Scratching surfaces also need to be positioned in the most appealing places to scratch within the home. These may be at the location of the inappropriate scratching, and near to doors that lead outside (possibly perceived as territorial boundaries by your cat).

You can train your cat not to ruin your lovely new sofaCredit:
Alamy

For many cats, simply having scratching resources in the right locations is enough for them to use them spontaneously. However, others need a little formal training. You can encourage you cat to interact with his scratcher by luring him there with a toy. Move it quickly around the scratcher, pulling it slightly out of reach to tantalise your cat so that as he jumps and swipes for it, he makes contact with the scratcher. His excitement, paired with the feeling of claw touching the scratching material, is highly likely to set off a bout of scratching.

Understanding the urge to hunt

Not long ago, cats were praised for their hunting prowess. In just a few decades, cats have come to be demonised as “murderers,” and even their doting owners can be appalled when they bring home gory little “presents”. So why is hunting so important to the well-fed pampered pet? The first reason is the cat’s addiction to animal flesh. Cats obtain most of their energy from protein and fat, and not from carbohydrates as we do. Moreover, such a cat needs not just any old protein but specifically animal protein, as protein from plants lacks some components essential for cats’ health, components that dogs (and humans) can make inside their own bodies. (That’s why almost all cat foods you buy in the supermarket contain a substantial proportion of meat or fish.)

The consequence of this addiction to meat is that before the introduction of commercial cat food, only those cats that were the most skilled hunters were able to survive the lean times when prey was hard to come by. Just 25 generations back from today’s pet cats, only the leanest and meanest hunters would have left enough offspring to qualify as ancestors. Too little time has passed, and with no selection bias from humans for those that are less able at hunting, for the instinct to hunt to subside.

Even the most laid-back pet displays its legacy as a hunter when it plays with “toys”. Scientific research has revealed that cats treat toys just like they do prey. They prefer toys that are about the size of a mouse or a small bird, they like their toys to have limbs and either fur or feathers, and they play with large toys at paws’ length as if they were worried they might bite back. The toy needs to move or fall apart if it is to sustain their interest for long, and they play more intensely when they are hungry.

All of this mirrors exactly what we know of what motivates cats when they’re hunting. Playing with toys can be an effective way of meeting the cat’s desire to hunt, and a way of using up energy that might otherwise go into actual hunting. Thus, by teaching our cats that we can provide ample chances for hunting behaviour, we may just be able to satisfy their predatory needs without any blood being spilt.